


on a howling road

by surrenderer



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: Blink And You Miss It Slash, Ficlet, International Fanworks Day 2021, M/M, Magic, POV Second Person, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 17:55:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29372679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/surrenderer/pseuds/surrenderer
Summary: “I am a North Englishman,” you once told Henry Lascelles. “Nothing would please me better than that my King should come home. It is what I have wished for all my life.”Perhaps you will live to see it.
Relationships: John Childermass/John Segundus
Comments: 4
Kudos: 8





	on a howling road

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this in December 2018 as an experimental piece, both in writing in 2nd person and for this fandom, and now, almost 3 years later and a bit of polishing, I have decided that it is time to post it in honor of International Fanworks Day.
> 
> Title is from ["Hitchhiker"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H12YY41P0YQ) by Empires.

You do not remember when you first knew of magic as _magic_ , but you remember the call of it in your heart when you were a child. You do not have the words to verbalize it, to say it out loud, but it is there. You know it is there.

It is in the wind sweeping across the moor. It is in the flap of a raven’s wings. It is in the way the moss and the trees and the fog call to you and the dampness seeps into your bones.

When you arrive at the ocean for the first time, you hear the whispers of the waves and the creaking of the stones. You _know_.

* * *

You are twenty-two years old, but you feel like you have been alive much, much longer. You have seen more of this world than you care to. You see it with your eyes and you see it with your cards; you see it in the suffering and the silence, but in the joy as well.

Then you enter the service of a magician in Yorkshire. You are not apprehensive about it; you have known magic since you were a child, you have felt it in your bones and you wear it with confidence, as if it were a well-worn cloak. Norrell does not care about your history, your past, your childhood, your crimes. He only cares about your skills: reading, writing, an ability to uncover secrets, some talents of a not-so-upstanding nature, and of course, magic. You learn from the books you acquire for him; you learn from the cases that you are told to investigate. It is never _truly_ magic, though. Not the kind that sings in your heart.

Eventually, you learn spells. Norrell teaches you some and you pick up others through the books, in taverns and inns on the road when you have nothing else to do. You learn how to channel the wildness in your blood into something useful and proper and _English_ , but part of you never stops crying out for the woods and the stones and the return of your king.

You cannot shape the world around you yet, but you know there is more to come.

* * *

There is one magician in England. And then there are two.

And then there are none.

Magic, _true_ magic, returns to England and takes Norrell and Strange as its bargain. John Uskglass returns to England. You feel him humming in your veins and you feel his magic in the air. You are not the only one; all throughout the country, magic is being harnessed. A man who is a book who is a man is in your keeping. You remember cutting him down from his hanging branches, but you thought he was dead. He is not, somehow.

You are not either, somehow. You live and breathe, though you know that you shouldn't.

_“I am a North Englishman,”_ you once told Henry Lascelles. _“Nothing would please me better than that my King should come home. It is what I have wished for all my life.”_

Perhaps you will live to see it.

* * *

You and Vinculus travel together; first to societies of magicians newly congregated and brought back together. There is no one to deny their studies now. But you are foolish to think that you may avoid the North for long, and indeed, you find that you do not want to. Hurtfew Abbey is no longer there, trapped in the eternal darkness alongside Norrell and Strange, but there are other places to welcome you.

“Starecross is always open to fellow magicians,” John Segundus declares when you arrive at his door, Vinculus in tow. He is teaching a dozen pupils nowadays and offers you both rooms with little hesitation, alongside an invitation to breakfast in the morning.

England has need of magicians and where better to teach them than here?

You leave the next day, but you return, and Starecross is there to welcome you. England has need of you and your magic and the book and you serve at the pleasure of the Raven King, but Starecross is safe, Starecross is as much a home as Hurtfew Abbey once was, as much a home as you will ever allow yourself to have.

So the years pass in this fashion. Magic flourishes; it is harder and harder to imagine a time when it did not. Older pupils return and start their own schools, and it shocks you in the beginning when they refer to you as _master_ and delight in explaining their newest discoveries to you upon your return.

Segundus smiles and squeezes your arm as you tell him about the encounter later in the evening, in front of the fire that crackles merrily in your shared quarters. “Why would they not? You have as much of a hand in their education as I, John.”

* * *

When the grey in your hair overwhelms the black and the cold seeps into your bones and you are no longer impervious to the weather, you know it is time. No man may be immortal, after all.

You close your eyes and slip into a dream; you are young again, you are standing on the moors and in every gust of wind, you hear wings.

He appears next to you as though he has been here the whole time, waiting for your arrival. You bow, and then you kneel.

He lays a hand on your head gently. “You have done your job, John Childermass. I have not made it easy for you. You have earned your rest.”

The ravens fly across the moor and you are at peace.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you all enjoyed this! You can find me thinking about Star Wars on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/parttimewonders) and about all sorts of other things on [Tumblr](https://part-timewonders.tumblr.com/).


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